I Was Here(17)
Author: Gayle Forman

I’m about to apologize, but I see the delight in Harry’s eyes, like I’ve just given him the world’s biggest puzzle. So I thank him instead.

He nods. “How are the cats doing?”

“Don’t know. That guy Ben took them.”

“He lives in Seattle, right?”

I shrug. I think that’s what he said.

“If you want to check on the cats, my church group is going up there this afternoon to paint a youth center. We could give you a ride.”

“They’re kittens, Harry, not babies. And they’re probably not even there. He was sending them to his mom.” Though the way Ben talked, I didn’t get the sense he was the kind of guy who saw his mom every week. “Anyhow, they’re not my concern anymore.”

He holds his hands up. “Sorry. You seemed pretty into them. Meg was.”

“I’m not Meg.”

He nods again. “Let me get to work on this.”

x x x

The morning drags on. Alice and Stoner Richard aren’t home and Harry hasn’t left his room, so I sit there, on the front porch, watching the rain come down. In the corner, I see one of the catnip-filled mice the kittens would spend hours attacking. It’s like it’s staring at me.

“Oh, fine.” I grab my phone and text Ben. How are the cats?

He texts back immediately: Out back. Trying to catch rain. Then he texts a picture of them frolicking in a yard.

Good pastime for Seattle cats.

Beats chasing tail.

You’d know.

Ha! Where are you?

Tacoma.

There’s a lag before the next text. Then, Come visit them? They grow up so fast.

I’m not entirely sure why my stomach does a little tumble except that the thought of seeing Ben McCallister is both repulsive and the opposite of that. Before I’ve had a chance to think too much about it, I text back: Okay.

Three seconds later: Need a lift?

I’m covered.

He sends me his address and tells me to text him when I’m on the road.

x x x

There’s a whole vanload from Harry’s church group going to Seattle, and I’m a little shocked to find Stoner Richard crammed into the back.

“Hey, Cody,” he says.

“Hey, Richard,” I reply. “Didn’t take you for a—”

“A Christian?” He laughs. “I’m just in it for the paint fumes. I’m all out of weed.”

One of the girls in the middle seat throws a paint roller at him. “Shut up, Richard. You are so full of shit.”

Cursing, stoner, do-gooding Christians. Okaayy.

She turns to me. “His father is a minister in Boise. Do you go to church?”

“Only because memorial services are so often held in them.”

She and Richard and Harry exchange a look, and even though I don’t think she goes to Cascades, it’s clear she knows what—and who—I’m talking about.

Someone blasts Sufjan Stevens, and Richard and Harry and the rest of the van sing along all the way to the outskirts of Seattle. I text Ben that I’m nearby.

Repeat just hit the litter box, he texts back. I’ll save it for you.

I allow a smile at that.

“Careful.” This from Stoner Richard. We’re pulling onto the off-ramp now, and he is climbing over the back row.

“You’re the one surfing in a moving vehicle.”

He squeezes next to me. “I know how guys like that are. Saw how he was with Meg. Charming on the outside, but inside, total douche.”

And here’s the crazy awful horrible thing. For one second, I almost defend Ben. But then I catch myself and I’m appalled, because Richard is right. Ben is a dick. He slept with Meg and then he blew her off, and now that she’s dead, he feels bad about it and he’s trying to be nice to me to make up for it.

I’m not sure why I’m here, why I’m in Tacoma picking at scabs that need to scar. Or why I’m in Seattle, being dropped off in front of a shabby Craftsman bungalow in Lower Queen Anne. But it’s like I’m being pushed along by a momentum stronger than me, because before I have a chance to change my mind, to tell the do-gooders that I’ll come with them for the afternoon and paint, Harry is telling me they’ll be back around five, and Richard is eyeing me with an expression that I can only describe as paternal, though I’m the last person in the world who would know what that actually looks like, and the van is roaring off.

I stand in front of the fading blue house, beer cans and cigarette butts out front. I try to summon some of that anger, that hatred for Ben, to somehow propel me inside.

The door cracks open and out comes a little gray blur. I watch it go by. Pete. Ben was right. He’s gotten bigger.

Then the door swings wider, and Ben runs after him in bare feet, his hair wet. “Shit!”

“What?”

“We don’t let them out in the front.” He dives under a bush and comes back holding Pete by the scruff of his neck. “Too much traffic.”

“Oh.”

Ben holds out the now-compliant kitten for me to take. So I kiss him on his fuzzy head and he proceeds to claw me right under my ear.

“Ouch!” I yell.

“He gets a little rambunctious.”

“I can see that.” I hand him back to Ben.

“Let’s go inside,” he says.

He opens the door to the house. The hardwood floors are scuffed, but there are nice new built-in wooden shelves everywhere, full of books, record albums, and flickering novena candles. Ben turns on a light and leans in, and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me or something, and my fists tighten. But he pulls back my hair and peers at my neck. “That’s pretty nasty,” he says.

I touch my finger to the scratch, which is starting to rise into a welt. “It’s okay.”

“You should rinse it with hydrogen peroxide.”

“I’m fine.”

He shakes his head. “The cats use the litter box. You could get cat-scratch fever.”

“That’s not a real thing; it’s just a song.”

“It is too a real thing. Your glands swell up.”

“How do you know so much about cats?”

“We had a bunch of them growing up. My mom didn’t believe in spaying or neutering. For pets or humans.”

I follow him into a pink 1960s bathroom, humid from his recent shower. He digs around in the medicine cabinet and pulls out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He dabs some on a tissue and leans over toward me.

I grab the tissue. “I can manage,” I say. The scratch goes white and foamy and stings for a second and then it’s fine. And then we’re just standing there in the bathroom, all warm and wet and small.